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Easy to play builds should be less effeective ( plat 2-3 elo)


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When people talk about gw2 balance the main thing they refer to is how strong/overpowered a build is, but if its only a problem when few people play it its not as much of an issue if everyone is able to play a build and make it OP.

A good exemple of balance i would say is something like guardian which is a very easy class but its not the best class, which means it has a low skill floor and a low skill cap. Something like herald has a high skillcap and high skillfloor and most people consider herald to be OP. But if we look at mechanically weaker players, are they really useful on herald? not really, they just die easely before they even have a chance to do anything compared to guardian that can spam alot of blocks, aoes and has an elite that resets all their cds so they can cycle through their cooldowns again before they die.

If we look at this meta and the previous balance patches, necro before the nerfs to sustain was an exemple of an easy and efffective class. tons of sustain and decent dmg and pressure and even 1v1 ability before the nerfs, now its balanced and not OP, same with reaper, reaper is also a very easy spec it dosent have much to it and its balanced because its easely focused and dosent have many ways to mitigate damage.

Now the things that are not balanced, when it comes to how easy it is to play the class vs the reward: condi thief, core ranger, renegade, burn guardian ( only burn , other type of guardians are fine).

All these builds have something in common, they are all very easy to play and are extremely effective regardless of your skill level. condi thief can kill some1 with legit 2 buttons, same with burn guardian. Core ranger and renegade just win 1v1s for free vs most of the builds in this game without having to do much. a ranger can miss all their skills, play really poorly and still win because the pet hits you for 6-7k . A renegade can just drop aoe on the node and full cap most people for free without having to do much.

When anet devs look at balance, always consider the difficulty of the build. you dont want to make the average player good because of a build, and you dont want to do the opposite either, it is fine for easier builds to exist, not every1 has good reaction time or good ping, every1 should be able to play pvp but easy builds should not be the most effective.

it dosent mean higher skill cap classes dont need nerfs, it just means it dosent need as many nerfs as people ask for because they get outplayed but dont realize it. sometimes people think they should be able to stand still, press random buttons on their skillbar and not dodge any abilities and win, and if they dont win the other class is overpowered, you might think its funny but alot of the casual gw2 playerbase actually thinks that way. It dosent even cross their mind they are not playing good and automatically assume whatever killed them is overpowered and needs to be nerfed.

Anet just neeeds to be careful with balance changes and take class/build difficulty in consideration . i still believe herald , holo are a bit overtuned despite being harder to play classes, explosive entrance needs a nerf and rev healing skills need to be nerfed to make up for the fact that it has 2 healing skills instead of 1 like other classes. Theres other things aswelll but anet definitely needs to focus on easier builds first, that way its alot less problematic if 20 people can make a build OP vs half of the gw2 pvp playerbase being able to achieve the same results without much effort.

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Terrible idea. A builds effectiveness should be independent of how hard, or not, it is. Else there is no reason to ever play an easy build, and people will be forced to play hard builds they might not enjoy. Even fighting games dont do something this monumentally misguided.

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This doesn't make sense. The easier a profession/spec is to play, the easier it is to counter in high elo.

Take redundant Spellbreaker for example:For low rated players it's all about dodging that autoattack dps. For high rated players it's the CC. A warrior can spam all his buttons but will get punished for it in higher elo - nothing changes except the counterplay hence it gets easier to defeat them on a proper build.

As the Spellbreaker learns to bait cooldowns and fake cast his stuff, naturally it gets harder to fight - but it's not the build. The reason f.ex Spellbreakers have an easy time in low elo is because they can easily connect every f1 and Full Counter for MT since opponents don't dodge - that's what makes them powerhouses running around with 25 might. In higher elo it's far from that easy to do, arguably making simpler builds harder to play the further up you go.

On top of all that, there is the argument of condi thieves doing a +1 on ya. This is why every duelist spec has an "oh no" button, either in the form of a trait, rune, sigil or skill. Ever watched a stream where a 1v1 is going on on a sidenode and you think "why did he not pop Elixir S there the timing was perfect!"? This is why.

They know there's a condi thief about and saves it. If you don't believe me try equipping a triple cleanse skill and let a thief do it's full burst on you - with the right timing you can avoid the majority of the damage.

Most of the time a simple build is just a bad build, which gets punished harder the better your opponents get.

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I don't have an issue with too many things. CMC already said they'd look into shaving p/d's initial burst, which sounds fair to me.

The issue I do have, and to your point, is that Malyx/Herald is an extremely low skill floor and high skill ceiling build that is basically good at everything. 3 hard CC's, blocks, i-frames, boon strips, virtually immune to condis. In the hands of a decent player, this build is truly a plague. It will fully destroy 3's unless they shave it a bit.

I feel the balance is overall fine, other than this beast. Really needs to be addressed for both preseason and season.

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@UNOwen.7132 said:Terrible idea. A builds effectiveness should be independent of how hard, or not, it is. Else there is no reason to ever play an easy build, and people will be forced to play hard builds they might not enjoy. Even fighting games dont do something this monumentally misguided.

nah, a build can absolutely be too effective for how easy/effortless it is, turret engi is a decent past example.

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@Quadox.7834 said:

@UNOwen.7132 said:Terrible idea. A builds effectiveness should be independent of how hard, or not, it is. Else there is no reason to ever play an easy build, and people will be forced to play hard builds they might not enjoy. Even fighting games dont do something this monumentally misguided.

nah, a build can absolutely be too effective for how easy/effortless it is, turret engi is a decent past example.

The only issue that could arise is botting, but evidently you dont need an easy build for botting nowadays. Otherwise, it doesnt matter how easy a build is, it should be no different in power to a hard build. Imagine if, iunno, Street Fighter did that. Noone would play Ryu because he would suck.

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@UNOwen.7132 said:

@UNOwen.7132 said:Terrible idea. A builds effectiveness should be independent of how hard, or not, it is. Else there is no reason to ever play an easy build, and people will be forced to play hard builds they might not enjoy. Even fighting games dont do something this monumentally misguided.

nah, a build can absolutely be too effective for how easy/effortless it is, turret engi is a decent past example.

The only issue that could arise is botting, but evidently you dont need an easy build for botting nowadays. Otherwise, it doesnt matter how easy a build is, it should be no different in power to a hard build. Imagine if, iunno, Street Fighter did that. Noone would play Ryu because he would suck.

nah, decent fighting games absolutely take this into account. ryu doesn't play himself, he is more like the gw2 equivalent of warrior i suppose. even in melee, people complain all the time about jigglypuff being too easy. nobody would want to play or watch if there was a character that could go toe-to-toe vs fox by pressing two buttons (just as an example) while the fox has to l-cancel, wavedash, shinespike, etc etc. both skillfloor and skillcap matter.

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Every build is easy to play.

You can learn every single build in the game in 2 days to plat2 levels if you have a basic understanding of the game.

When anet devs look at balance, always consider the difficulty of the build.And this is the dumbest thing they can do because the individual skill level becomes a non-factor and it's all about builds again.

The game does not suddenly become fun when you get wrecked by build xy without counterplay and the build's player just tells you "it's hard to climb to plat with that build, so it's balanced.".

they get outplayed but dont realize itSo you are basically saying that once you became good on a quite difficult build (if something like that exists) then all possible counterplay should be eliminated and you should constantly be rewarded for no reason.

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I see what motivates this. It is frustrating to see a build that requires less effort perform well. I will be the first to say that and some builds you mention are really driving crazy.

But the goal of the game is not to make harder = better. It is to find a balance for most of the players, allow different playstyles. Even in mobas, shooters, fighting game, strategies or anything with versus this is not possible to maintain. In mobas I play heroes because I enjoy them and am happy to get a > 50% winrate.

I can already give you my opposite thought. Which ranger build should be on par with revenant? And I already know the answer because the forums made it clear for the past years.

Edit : Obviously difficulty should be taken into account when you adjust performance but not in a way that makes those options weaker. Just something that makes their performance more constant with a smaller peak (but not to the point where they are not as good)

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@Quadox.7834 said:

@UNOwen.7132 said:Terrible idea. A builds effectiveness should be independent of how hard, or not, it is. Else there is no reason to ever play an easy build, and people will be forced to play hard builds they might not enjoy. Even fighting games dont do something this monumentally misguided.

nah, a build can absolutely be too effective for how easy/effortless it is, turret engi is a decent past example.

The only issue that could arise is botting, but evidently you dont need an easy build for botting nowadays. Otherwise, it doesnt matter how easy a build is, it should be no different in power to a hard build. Imagine if, iunno, Street Fighter did that. Noone would play Ryu because he would suck.

nah, decent fighting games absolutely take this into account. ryu doesn't play himself, he is more like the gw2 equivalent of warrior i suppose. even in melee, people complain all the time about jigglypuff being too easy. nobody would want to play or watch if there was a character that could go toe-to-toe vs fox by pressing two buttons (just as an example) while the fox has to l-cancel, wavedash, shinespike, etc etc. both skillfloor and skillcap matter.

Good fighting games absolutely dont take difficulty into account when balancing a character, and for good reason. Yes, Ryu doesnt play himself, but thats because the baseline for fighting games is higher. But compared to the hard characters in street fighter, Ryu is extremely simple. Or hell, take DBFZ. SSJ Goku is one of the, if not the easiest characters. He is also one of the best characters.

Now, why dont they take difficulty into account? Because that would be terrible. It would raise the already high barrier of entry that fighting games have even higher, drastically lower character diversity and cause the entire game to degenerate. Its important that SSJ Goku can be good just the same as Frieza can be. Or Ginyu. Or why Carl isnt inherently better than Ragna in BB.

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@Quadox.7834 said:

@UNOwen.7132 said:Terrible idea. A builds effectiveness should be independent of how hard, or not, it is. Else there is no reason to ever play an easy build, and people will be forced to play hard builds they might not enjoy. Even fighting games dont do something this monumentally misguided.

nah, a build can absolutely be too effective for how easy/effortless it is, turret engi is a decent past example.

The only issue that could arise is botting, but evidently you dont need an easy build for botting nowadays. Otherwise, it doesnt matter how easy a build is, it should be no different in power to a hard build. Imagine if, iunno, Street Fighter did that. Noone would play Ryu because he would suck.

nah, decent fighting games absolutely take this into account. ryu doesn't play himself, he is more like the gw2 equivalent of warrior i suppose. even in melee, people complain all the time about jigglypuff being too easy. nobody would want to play or watch if there was a character that could go toe-to-toe vs fox by pressing two buttons (just as an example) while the fox has to l-cancel, wavedash, shinespike, etc etc. both skillfloor and skillcap matter.

All of this is right. ^

I'd like to venture a suggestion that Easy builds should have easy counters.Jigglypuff is easy to play but she's also extremely light and insta-dies on shield break, so her weaknesses enforce smart play.Ryu is easy to play but if all you do is spam Hadoukens and wake up DP, you can get shut down hard, so his weaknesses enforce smart play.Warrior is easy to play, but if anyone knows your telegraphs and can kite you around, you can easily be frustrated into a loss.

Easy builds allow players to join and be effective which increases their retention rate, so those should indeed be allowed. The problem arises when easy builds are easy and also have no readily available counter.

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@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

@UNOwen.7132 said:Terrible idea. A builds effectiveness should be independent of how hard, or not, it is. Else there is no reason to ever play an easy build, and people will be forced to play hard builds they might not enjoy. Even fighting games dont do something this monumentally misguided.

nah, a build can absolutely be too effective for how easy/effortless it is, turret engi is a decent past example.

The only issue that could arise is botting, but evidently you dont need an easy build for botting nowadays. Otherwise, it doesnt matter how easy a build is, it should be no different in power to a hard build. Imagine if, iunno, Street Fighter did that. Noone would play Ryu because he would suck.

nah, decent fighting games absolutely take this into account. ryu doesn't play himself, he is more like the gw2 equivalent of warrior i suppose. even in melee, people complain all the time about jigglypuff being too easy. nobody would want to play or watch if there was a character that could go toe-to-toe vs fox by pressing two buttons (just as an example) while the fox has to l-cancel, wavedash, shinespike, etc etc. both skillfloor and skillcap matter.

All of this is right. ^

I'd like to venture a suggestion that
Easy builds should have easy counters
.Jigglypuff is easy to play but she's also extremely light and insta-dies on shield break, so her weaknesses enforce smart play.Ryu is easy to play but if all you do is spam Hadoukens and wake up DP, you can get shut down hard, so his weaknesses enforce smart play.Warrior is easy to play, but if anyone knows your telegraphs and can kite you around, you can easily be frustrated into a loss.

Easy builds allow players to join and be effective which increases their retention rate, so those should indeed be allowed. The problem arises when easy builds are easy and also have no readily available counter.

That has nothing to do with how easy the build is though. Every build needs a counter. Its no less of a problem when a hard build doesnt have a counter.

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@UNOwen.7132 said:Every build needs a counter. Its no less of a problem when a hard build doesnt have a counter.

That's not what I said.

Easy builds should have easy counters .

Easy builds are fine to have. It should be just as easy to counterplay it though, so that the skill in using that build gets built on being innovative, creative or predictive instead of the build just carrying the player.

Jigglypuff is easy to play, but easy to kill, for example. The skilled jigglypuff players learned how to cover that weakness in a multitude of different situations. People that dont put in that work can still play jigglypuff and still win with her, itll just be much easier for them to be shut down.

That should be applied here as well, in principle at least. If it is easy for you to output lethal levels of damage with a certain build, that build should have risk or weakness proportional to its ease of damage delivery, that doesn't involve significant counterbuilding.

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@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

Every
build needs a counter. Its no less of a problem when a hard build doesnt have a counter.

That's not what I said.

Easy builds should have
easy
counters
.

Easy builds are fine to have. It should be just as easy to counterplay it though, so that the skill in using that build gets built on being innovative, creative or predictive instead of the build just carrying the player.

Any build should be easy to counterplay. After all, you want everyone to have a chance to do so. Thats why the distinction makes no sense.

Jigglypuff is easy to play, but easy to kill, for example. The skilled jigglypuff players learned how to cover that weakness in a multitude of different situations. People that dont put in that work can still play jigglypuff and still win with her, itll just be much easier for them to be shut down.

Easy to kill typically makes a character inherently harder. Seth, in UNIST, is hard in particular because he is incredibly fragile.

That should be applied here as well, in principle at least. If it is easy for you to output lethal levels of damage with a certain build, that build should have risk or weakness proportional to its ease of damage delivery, that doesn't involve significant counterbuilding.

Any build should have the same level of risk or weakness, or else you run into the same issue that you want to avoid.

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Speaking about "easy builds" and plat 2-3 elo is quite odd, so I would like to know what is your definition of easy.

And then there is the paradox: an easy build to play will be hard to play at higher elos ... because it will require precision to land the obvious skill that your opponent is expecting you to land.

For instance, playing a full DH trap build in plat2-3 is not easy. Why ? Because the build is quite predictive, kitable and lacks defensive options. The same build played in gold, however, is a total noob killer.

An other example could be the burn guard. On paper, it sounds easy: put sword of justice on top of a symbol, wait 3 s and it's good, opponent will die with 15 stacks of burn. However, in plat 2-3, people know how to counter that quite easily ... they will step aside of the AoE, and annihilate that stability-lacking build. That is a reason why you don't see this build in plat2+.

I dont know how easy this condi-thief build is to play but I do think its effectiveness is due more to the way stealth interact which condis than the build itself. If the player survives the first "condi coming out of nowhere" strike, i can guarantee you the thief is pretty dead. Imo, this example is unrelated to the actual topic "build effectiveness should be linked on how hard it is to play" as it is a very cheese build that is almost like tossing a coin at the first second of the combat "cleanse and win or die from condi".

And then there are the "hard builds" like herald or weaver. And if you ask me, I would say that their strength should rely on how "unpredictable" (because of the number of different skills they have) they could be instead of the skills they have. Unfortunately that is not how it is done in practice: these builds offer too strong offensive and defensive options, so that someone mastering that class will cumulate the defensive options while waiting for the strong offensive ones to get out of cooldown. Is it hard to learn how to cumulate the defensive options ? Yes, certainly. Does it offer counterplay while it is mastered ? Absolutely not.

When engaging an herald, I know exactly what his skill rotations are going to be. The other plat 2-3+ players also know it. However, fighting often results in watching your character die even if you played perfectly, because no counterplay is proposed. And for them, this "hard build" actually becomes an easy build.

And for these reasons, the number of buttons your class has should not be linked to how effective it is. Instead, it should offer you an other game experience that "easier classes" cannot give you; while having the same efficiency when properly mastered .

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